A Vision of Hell

[FONT=&quot] A Divine Comedie Bouffe, A Vision of George Bush's Inexcellent Misadventures in Heaven and Hell (Please read with your sense of humor turned on, and I apologize for the length)


“God is a Republican”
[FONT=&quot] – Jerry Falwell

[FONT=&quot] The scene is a zanily Danteesque, searingly surreal chamber in hell, sometime after the Grim Reaper has claimed the entire accursed cast of characters involved. To roll opening discredits, the lead pernicious players in this bit of netherworldly farce are the two George Bushes, p?re and fils, Saddam Hussein, and Charles Manson – with a special cameo appearance by a macabrely Mel Brooksian Satan (he makes Jesse James ride about on a literal blazing saddle all day! :devil.

[FONT=&quot] As per usual, the two Bushes are off in a corner locked in a touching t?te–?–t?te. I.e., junior is blubberingly beseeching his father for the umpteenth time to help him come to terms with their tragically ironic situation, “But daddy, I really don’t understand what we’re doing here. Gosh darn it we were Americans, and we were presidents of the United States. We just can’t be evildoers. Even if we did things that would make someone else, like a terrorist, evil, we had the authority of the Constitution. And it might sound corny but I know in my heart that right or wrong Americans are always the good guys. We certainly can’t be Saddam or Osama evil. And add to that the fact that I had a personal relationship with Jesus, and I really, really don’t get it at all.” And for the umpteenth tiresome time his patricianly papa merely rolled his eyes and admonished Dubya to keep a stiff upper lip.

[FONT=&quot] Meanwhile, Charlie Manson is ranting on to himself, “Hey man, I’m the Devil, and I’m Jesus Christ too. I’m both of those cosmic cats rolled into one mind-blowing paradox, so I should be running this place.” And Saddam cheerlessly contemplates his plight, “This really is hell, I’m trapped for all eternity with the two Bushes and this freak. I’d rather be caged with a pack of Kurdish sex offenders on Viagra.”

[FONT=&quot] Well, the Devil is doing his rounds, tormenting the damned, and he drops in with Doctor Mengele, who today is giving all the gents (beginning with himself) a prostate exam with barbed wire entwined around his finger. Manson appeals to the malicious medico, “Hey man, go gentle with me. See this swastika on my forehead, I dig you dudes.” But before Mengele can get down to business with Charlie suddenly hell begins to quake and vibrate and all its residents knock off the normal pandemonium. You could hear the proverbial pin drop. In the words of a classic song “There’s something happening here, and what it is ain’t exactly clear”. Even the Devil seems dismayed, and then smack-dab in the cell teleports Jesus Christ himself. It’s the first time since just after the Crucifixion that he’s paid a visit of state to hell.

[FONT=&quot] He straightaway began to address Manson, but Dubya couldn’t control himself and interrupted to plead “Lord, it’s me, George W. Bush, you helped me stop doing coke and boozing it up, I had a close personal relationship with you. Surely there’s been a huge mistake, I’m sure I don’t really belong here. Can’t you take me with you? Oh yeah, and daddy too. I know he was an Episcopalian and wasn’t born again like me, but he was an American and a president of the United States.”

[FONT=&quot] Well, Jesus didn’t wish to be condescending but replied that God doesn’t make human clerical errors and that it’s hell, not purgatory, everyone in hell is an afterlifer. Then he turned again to Manson who started running off at the mouth with his signature spiel that he’s the real Jesus Christ, yada yada yada.

[FONT=&quot] Jesus unceremoniously handed the murderous mock messiah a memo with God’s letterhead and burning bush logo on it, and a personal revelation for Charlie written in the most beautiful calligraphy. It read, “This is my revelation unto thee, Charles Milles Manson, thou art merely a clownish charlatan, a beggarly and homicidally-maniacal bozo. Abandon all thine absurd delusions of grandeur and desist from fraudulently claiming to be the son of God.” (Of course the sound of this is just God spoofing our stuffy stereotypes of him, he doesn’t really speak in stilted, archaic English. In point of fact, God’s favorite human languages are Iron Age Hebrew, Esperanto, and American Sign Language, even though he doesn’t have actual hands. Chalk it up to divine inscrutability!)

[FONT=&quot] Jesus then acerbically remarked that “For some people even landing in hell isn’t enough of a wakeup call, but now you’ve officially gotten the memo, you ain’t me”. And then with the words “Beam me up Petey” he started to transport back to Heaven. Well, in a demonstration of uncharacteristic quick-wittedness, Dubya seized the moment and the opportunity and jumped into the matter stream, or should I say the ether stream, and beamed up with him on the down-low.

[FONT=&quot] When Dubya finished energizing in Heaven and beheld its beatific beauty he was of course initially quite dumfounded and stupefied. But this being a state that he was not exactly unaccustomed to, after just a few moments he got his legs sturdily back under him and began to intrepidly wander about, noting all the famous faces he saw there. The first was that of Teddy Kennedy. Well, needless to say he couldn’t believe his eyes, and thinking out loud mumbled "Who would have thunk it, but what about Chappaquiddick and all the votes that he cast in the Senate for abortion and stem cell research?!" Next he noticed Malcolm X and murmured “But wasn’t he some kind of a Muslim?” But what really took him aback was the sight of Charles Darwin. He was trying not to call attention to himself but couldn’t help exclaiming “How the heck did he make it in, he’s the twisted mind that came up with that theory of evolution stuff!!!”

[FONT=&quot] This perturbed utterance brought a reprimanding reply from Saint Peter, who was observantly tailing Dubya, “Well George, for starters Malcolm and Darwin never killed anyone.” The stern guardian of the pearly gates then chided “The presence of one, such as yourself, who doesn’t belong, is highly out of keeping with the good order of Heaven. I’m sorry but you really must return downstairs now.” But irrepressible Dubya spoke up for himself, “I was an American, I have rights. I demand habeas corpses (cut him some slack, he never went to law school; and as at this point his body is a moldering corpse, maybe he's attempting a bad Crypt Keeper-type pun? Comic books were his speed), I demand my day in court!” Enchanted by his naivet? Peter caved in and agreed to take him before the judgment seat of God.

[FONT=&quot] Peter recalled the bit of lawyerly wisdom that one who defends himself has a fool for a client and insisted that Dubya use Johnny Cochran as his advocate. After he got over his astonishment that the likes of a hired gun such as Cochran was one of the blessed, Dubya assisted his mouthpiece in preparing the best case possible. Cochran then made his arguments to the Almighty with all of his vaunted style and skill. Nonetheless his whole defense fell just about as flat as an anorexic tween girl’s bosom and God summarily decreed that Bush was to return to Hades, forthwith. At this joyless juncture Dubya emotionally spoke out of order and begged for a merciful reprieve. Moved, God stepped down from his throne of blinding glory, looking surprisingly like the comedian Bill Maher, and instructed Dubya to tell him in his own words why he didn’t deserve to be cast back to hell.

[FONT=&quot] Well, Dubya proceeded to give God a load of politicianese to justify his crimes against humanity under the color of presidential authority. But alas, God, it turns out, despite being timeless, has precious little patience for self-justifying double-talk and curtly commanded Karl Marx, who now had his angel’s wings, to escort Bush back to hell. Back in hell Dubya’s dad asked him what it was like up above and could hardly believe his son’s fantastic account of seeing so many atheists and left-wingers, and of God’s striking resemblance to Bill Maher. “Well,” Bush senior dispiritedly remarked, “I was wondering why every time the toilets in the Democratic national headquarters flush a number two it materializes down here for poor ole Jerry Falwell to eat, but if Heaven’s a blue state and God’s issuing halos to dead Kennedys I guess that explains it.” Dubya, in a hushed tone, “You mean God’s the L-word? Who would have thunk it daddy, who would have thunk it?!”

An Epilogue

[FONT=&quot] An Epilogue

[FONT=&quot] By the bye, Bill Clinton eventually came to serve his sulfurous sentence with our forlorn foursome, and having learned that it was not so much his adulterous transgressions, but rather his appropriating a good deal of the conservative platform that actually sealed his harsh fate, he can often be heard lamenting his cynical choices. Especially on Tuesdays and Fridays, when he works on the posthumous memoirs of his sinful public life, and his erstwhile arch political antagonist Richard Scaife, who it unsurprisingly turns out was one of hell’s minions all along, comes a-calling in that “infamous blue dress” to take Dicktation from the ex head of state (now known as Beelzebubba, by the way). Somehow it’s just not the same as being secretarially serviced by Ms. Lewinsky . But then again it isn’t half as bad as when Dubya and his dad get Saddamized .



[FONT=&quot] A Disclaimer

[FONT=&quot] On a more analytical note, hell is an aggression-colored* psychological place that our minds travel to, are driven to out of the perennial woes and wrongs (both real and perceived) that are unrighteously thrown at us by the senseless or selfish behavior of our brother man, by the inclemency of history, and by the capriciousness of the world at large. Essentially, the Judeo-Christian myth of the ole supernatural subtropics, where Satan sees to it that the wicked wail, boils down to a wish-fulfilling revenge fantasy that gets our repressed resentment against other irksome human beings off, and wrathfully but manageably focuses the emotional sting and aggravation of residing in a universe where life’s actualities don’t always conform to our linear conceptions of fairness.

[FONT=&quot] Mmm hmm, scratch the sweetness & light fa?ade of John and Jane Q. Christian’s fundamentalist faith, or the faith of anyone who believes in hell, and you expose a spiritually dissonant, Janus-faced mentalit?. Its comely and engaging face is the way in which trusting that your reward is prepared for you in heaven can imbue you with inspirational hope and undaunted courage to cope.

[FONT=&quot] Turn the coin of belief in an otherworld over, however, and the repugnant reverse face is the way in which creedally clinging to the callous consolation that those who prick you with life’s evil thorns have their payback in store in the pit can make you smirk in your heart and savor the bigoted sense of having the last laugh.

[FONT=&quot] Yes, although it’s impolite to comment on, perhaps every bit as much as the beatitudes of heaven, the cruelties of hell help reconcile the evangelically-inclined among us with our frequent inability to obtain justice in this real world of “fallen” fellow humans and rampant random misfortune. That is, for old-time religionists, justice denied in the here & now gets twisted into justice with a vengeance in the hereafter, and this helps them deal.

[FONT=&quot] To put it in pop-Freudian terms, hell compensates one’s ego for the slings and arrows that undeservedly come every man and woman’s way. Even someone whose happiness and dignity have been riddled with more holes than Swiss cheese by a constant barrage of slings and arrows can feel like an ultimate winner vis–?–vis the ultimate losers in hell. The way the ego co-opts the doctrine of hell for its own boost is just one little way that egoism infects religion.

[FONT=&quot] Of course the score-evening fable of hell and its tortures does its psychologically compensatory thing for us at the spiritually costly expense of our mercy and compassion for those whom we vindictively visualize receiving divinely decreed chastisement in its awful clutches.

[FONT=&quot] Hell's fury, remember, is really our, not God's, scathing scorn for those who transgress against us. Conjuring it in our mind's eye is a sadistic catharsis, a meanly masturbatory release for our pent-up hard feelings (pardon the double entendre), one that buoys our spirits by evoking a sense of vindication and empowerment over our enemies in their imagined postmortem suffering.

[FONT=&quot] As the song says, whoomp! there it is. The perversely balmy benefit to our souls of envisioning a hell populated by all the unnice folks who’ve sinned against us is precisely this gratifying illusion of vindication and empowerment, for it avails us an unreal but relishable redress of our earthly grievances, and a sanctimoniously daydreamy avenue of escape from the waters of bitterness that our feeling of existential powerlessness might otherwise give us to wallow in.

[FONT=&quot] Such a psychoanalytical critique of hell and the emotional payoff of believing in it very much holds true for the early worshippers of Jesus, who invented the Christian hell as a way of mentally revenging themselves on their Roman persecutors, on hostile pagans, and on other Christians with whom they had heated theological differences. And it also most certainly applies to modern fundamentalists, who delight in punitively picturing homosexuals, unwed mothers, and liberals roasting on the Devil's rotisserie while they bliss out on pie in the sky with their savior. Yep, the concept of hell, upon close critical inspection, is usually just a rank religious expression of goody-goody grudgefulness and passive-aggressive vengefulness toward those who ill-treat or just plain irritate the pious. It does our moral character and spirituality little credit, but it does have some value for our emotional wellbeing.

[FONT=&quot] Well, that being said, I certainly don’t condone cheering ourselves by fantasizing about God visiting revenge and retribution upon those who aggrieve us, but it’s entirely understandable why people indulge such an escapist and satisfying coping mechanism. The above Tartarean tale, then, is nothing more than my parody of the hell-believer’s mentality and my own self-indulgently whimsical and wreakful musings on the portion of perdition that certain politicians might be deemed deserving of. Which is to say that, contra conservative Christians, I do not in the slightestendorse belief in the literal existence of hell. Again, hell is not a supernatural locale shrouded somewhere in the cosmic geography known only to church ladies and preachers, rather, it’s an uplifting but unlovely fancy of their minds.

[FONT=&quot] At any rate, villainizing and vilifying your ideological opponents as minions of hell can be great fun. And if you seriously put credence, as some do, in an unpleasant afterlife for those who refuse to see the light, then you can really take heart from the thought that those who don’t perceive things in your illuminated way are doomed to go to a worse, not a better place. Moreover, to add injury to insult, in a religious culture or context smearing someone as hell-bound and one of the Devil’s own is the ultimate destructive libel, and can be an extremely effective way of playing cutthroat politics, of waging very unspiritual hostilities to garner worldly power (something of course that churches, popes, and ayatollahs throughout history have understood quite well). All of this is what has always made the idea of hell so appealing after all. But appealing is not always the same thing as good.

[FONT=&quot] Indeed, at the end of the day making others out to be fated for a future of fire and brimstone, whatever one’s reason, is a morally bad practice that validates a theological figment of the very fundamentalist mind-set one so abhors. Yes, I know, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Although one is richly justified in jesting that the letters GOP might well stand for Gehenna’s Own Party, and in consigning the likes of George W. Bush there, hell is a thoroughly nasty notion that we all should refrain from making light of. There’s of course a much better way, than pondering one’s politico-philosophical foes in hell, of coping with life’s harassments, and with those who perpetrate them against us. Instead one can share in the dream of the kingdom of heaven actualized on earth, and cultivate its harmony and tranquility in the realm of one’s own mind .

* [FONT=&quot]The Buddhists teach that hell is a metaphysical place “characterized by acute aggression”, but the insight is the same.

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